"A Golden Stream of Wheat Flows From the Thresher to the Elevator." Life 3, no. 5: 2 August 1937, 16.

Since Jacob Meyers lives in the winter-wheat belt, he sows his seed
in the early fall. In late September the sprouts are up and remain
green throughout the winter. During the balmy Kansas May and the blistering
Kansas June, it grows 42 inches tall, heads out and ripens into swaying
gold. June is the danger month. Drought may wither its kernels in
their ripening stage. Rain may blight it with black stem rust.

But 1937 has been Jabob Meyers' lucky year. Late June found him
reaping his planted rows, binding and shocking them. Then he called
in the threshing crew: members of the wheat army that three months
each year roam the mid-continent wheatlands. Sometimes the Jacob
Meyers have threshers of their own; more often they hire them. Harvest
hands, ready to haul and pitch for 15 hr. a day, work from sunup
to sundown for $1.50. They move fast, in heat, dust, and sweat,
for now the kernels are ripe and must be winnowed before it rains.
Into the clattering thresher goes bundle after bundle. Out of it,
from one end, comes a wind-borne storm of chaff; from the other
stream of grain which Farmer Meyers trucks to his local grain elevator.
Soon it will be swelling the mighty rivers of wheat that are now
flowing to Kansas City, Minneapolis and Chicago mills and markets
in one of the greatest freight movements of all time.

Pitching wheat
bundles into the thresher requires two men on Jacob Meyers'
Kansas farm. The thresher (in centre) runs on tractor power,
moves the bundles on conveyer belts to the separator, where
the grain is winnowed. Chaff is blown out of the pipe (top)
to form the straw pile seen near every farmer's barn, used
by every farmer to bed down his cattle.

The grain truck
groans with a load of wheat just poured from the spout of
the threshing machine. When it is completely filled and shoveled
level, Jacob Meyers will drive it down to his local grain
elevator. There it will be reloaded into freight cars for
Kansas City. At well over $1 a bushel, this truck signifies
hard cash in Jacob Meyers' pocket.

The 30 bushel bin
of a harvesting combine is here being dumped into a grain
truck by Vincent Miller near Garnett, Kan. Combines are seldom
used on wheat fields smaller than 300 acres. They reap and
thrash all in one process while moving down the field.

Out of the spout
of a Kansas thresher comes this gush of golden grain, primary
food crop of man. Kansas produces one-fifth of the nation's
wheat. So heavy is this year's harvest that, for the first
time in four years, the U.S. may once more export wheat abroad.

Dunes of wheat
pile up outside grain elevators in the Texas Panhandle after
a sudden reversal of the nature cycle converts what threatened
to become a desert into an abundant wheat basket. Here are
10,000 bushels, awaiting their turn to go into the Hereford
elevator.

An empty store
was bought as an emergency elevator by C.A. Gordon, Prairie
Center, Kan. farmer, who harvested so much grain this year
from his 105 acres of prairie wheatland that he did not know
where to put it. Here are 700 of his bushels in temporary
storage.

The wheat army
follows seasonal rhythm of harvesting up from the Texas Panhandle
to the Canadian boarder. Mid- June saw them in northern Texas
squatting around the chuck wagon during their noon meal, while
the cook beats the bottom of a washtub for stragglers.

Day's end finds
weary harvest hands, rolled in blankets, sleeping in the fields
on bundles of wheat. This week they will be harvesting the
Dakota prairies. Soon they will finish their annual trek over
2,000 miles of U.S. wheat belt in fields along the Canadian
boarder.

Every Carload of Wheat is Tested

Key wheat market of the U.S. is the wheat pit of the Chicago Board
of Trade. This big square room where, with frantic gestures and
grimaces, brokers buy and sell a dozen times over the grain. The
nation's bread is made of, has gone imperishably into U.S. literature
in such classics as Frank Norris' The Pit. But before it is sold, every carload of grain must be tested. For this purpose
the state of Illinois maintains in Chicago a scrumpulously scientific
laboratory where wheat is sifted, sorted, graded, and marked. No boxcar
that rolls into the Chicago yards escapes the sharp eye of the State.
Testers climb into it, take samples, bag them, lable them, and turn
them over to the testing machines. Here the kernels are run through
a moisture meter (dry wheat is best), are measured and weighed,
tested for protein content, scrutinized with tweezers for dockage
(weeds, wild garlic, weevils), smelled for mustiness. No. 1 grade
weighs 60 lb. per bushel, brings a premium.

A carload of wheat is hefted
into the air by a mammoth machine at the Santa Fe elevator,
Turner, Kan., tilted sideways and in 10 min. emptied into a
hopper. Boxcar and grain weigh 150,000 lb. Grain shipments at
Turner on July 6 broke all known records (3,366 cars).

A torrent of wheat (left)
is streaming out of the door of this tilted boxcar. An average
boxcar holds 1,500 bushels. At the current price of $1.15, this
flow is worth $1,725. From here the wheat goes to a weighing
machine, then into 100- ft. elevator pits (right) for
the miller.

The wheat tester climbs
over the door guards into a grain car (1) in the Chicago yards
to take testing samples. Inside he sinks his grain probe into
the heap (2 and 3) and twists the handle to close its 11 openings.
Then he withdraws it and with another twist, empties it into
a strip of canvas (4). He makes five such probes in each part
of the car to fill the four- quart sample bag with which he
climbs out (5). At the testing laboratory the samples are smelled
by a grader to detect sour or musty sprouting odor (6).

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